The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 7, February 15, 2004, Article 17

20 JULI SURVIVOR

  Last week we mentioned the medals issued to survivors of
  the July 20, 1944 attempted assassination of Adolph Hitler.
  Coincidentally, a February 9th Reuters article highlighted the
  incredible story of one of those survivors who is still around
  to tell the tale.

  "Philipp von Boeselager's sleep is troubled by furtive chats
  with conspirators, concealed bombs and a desperate
  horseback ride from the battlefield on the day he and his
  friends tried to kill Hitler.

  In his dreams, the 86-year old baron talks to friends and
  co-plotters -- high-ranking German military officials -- who
  tried to blow up Adolf Hitler with a bomb on July 20, 1944
  and who were killed or committed suicide when the attempt
  failed.

  "If you are the only one among some 100 who is still alive,
  that makes you think. I feel they are watching me and I have
  a certain responsibility toward them,"  Boeselager told
  Reuters in Paris, where he received the prestigious Legion of
  Honor medal.

 "I call on young people to get politically involved, to feel
  responsible for their country. If that's not happening and if
  someone like (Nazi propaganda minister Joseph) Goebbels
  appeared today -- as millions are unemployed -- I would be
  very scared."

  Army officer Boeselager was only 25 when he was asked to
  join a secret team of officers who planned to kill the dictator
  -- and who were ready to sacrifice their own lives."

  "In his brown leather suitcase, Boeselager smuggled several
  British bombs -- "I realized English ones were the best" -- to
  General Hellmuth Stieff at Army High Command.

  "Getting out of the plane, I was limping, because I had been
  injured in the leg. Several young soldiers came up to me,
  offering to carry my suitcase.  But I refused. I thought they
  would notice at once that the suitcase was far too heavy."

  "Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a tall German aristocrat who
  deeply opposed the Nazis' treatment of Jews, planted one of
  Boeselager's bombs in a briefcase under a table close to Hitler."

  "In the days after the attack, the Nazis killed Stieff, Stauffenberg
  and many accomplices. Relatives of the plotters were arrested
  and Tresckow, like many others, committed suicide.

  Historians say thousands were killed or sent to concentration
  camps in the purge. Though the Nazis brutally tortured the
  conspirators, no one revealed Boeselager's name."

  To read the full story, see: Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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